Christmas with Jane
by Emily-in-the-glass
Summary: Jane Stuart's first Christmas with her reunited family, short sequel to Jane of Lantern Hill.
1. Chapter 1

Christmas had never meant a great deal to Jane, but the year she was thirteen it suddenly blossomed with new meaning. 

It was their first Christmas at Sunshine - so had Dad named their Lakeside Gardens home after Jane hung gold green curtains in its diamond-paned casement windows, set deep into its grey stone walls. The name suited the house so well, especially when they ate supper in the west-facing dining room, and found themselves flooded in light from the sunset across Lake Ontario. Dad wrote a poem on the sunset, and Jane had it framed in the entrance hallway.

Jane began planning for Christmas months ahead. What fun it was to create their own, new Christmas traditions as a family! Dad and Jane hunted in the ravine for pine boughs to make wreaths for the front door of sunshine. Dad carried home a small Christmas tree which mother and Jane filled with ornaments they bought from Queen Street. Jane asked Phyllis - for Phyllis persisted in being Jane's friend - if she couldn't have their set of NOMA Christmas lights, which she knew lay discarded in the Forest Hill garage. She climbed atop each of the four pine trees and hung them with fairy lights that twinkled against the luminous winter skies.

Dad's publisher sent her an advent calendar, and Jane thought there was no better way in the world than to count down the days by opening the little windows with hidden surprises. They set up a delightful nativity set with figurines whittled out of pine wood by the stone hearth, and Jane waited eagerly for the day they could add Baby Jesus to the manger. Jane had purchased it from a little out-of-the-way craft shop on off Bloor. Jane, who had never prowled around Toronto before when she lived at 60 Gay, was suddenly at liberty to do so and learned to love Toronto with its cosmopolitan fabric and small community boroughs. She loved taking the quaint red-and-white streetcars home from school, where the bus-driver with side whiskers never failed to greet her with, "Hello, russet." She always picked up fresh bread from the Polish bakery near the bus stop for supper, and the buxom Polish lady always added a surprise strudel or baklava to her purchases. She was already good friends with Mrs. Townley's gardener, who was ever watering the dourly lawn when she walked to school and even more dourly when she walked home - until Jane advised him to stop. Jane, whose thumbs were as green as any gardener, frankly informed Jim Flaherty that watering the garden at night was a waste of freshwater and promoted insect growth. So Jim devoted himself to pruning the flowers and shrubs at dusk, until the cool autumn dim faded into winter and he found himself idle. The November morning when he bagged up the last of the crinkling, raked leaves and bundled up brittle, dead branches for disposal, Jane arrested him and demanded his Christmas plans.

"S'pose I'll buy myself some cranberries, and a pie. Can splurge on that much, Miss Jane, before I hole up for the winter." he muttered uncomfortably.

Jane knew that ever since Jim moved out from Saskatchewan, he had lived alone in a shabby little boarding house on Dundas, full of drunken inhabitants and stale restaurant smells. Christmas there! It was a disgrace to the very name of the season. "Come to Sunshine. My Christmas won't be the same without a friend around. We'll be having roast turkey with cranberry stuffing, potato scallops and creamed vegetables. And a flaming plum pudding." Jane had hitherto never made any of these dishes, but the moment she said it, she knew she could.

Then there was the family from her Sunday school class. The first Sunday Jane arrived at St. Vincent's Church, she had gone dutifully to join the girls' sunday school in the basement. The class was disorganized and some of the younger girls were crying in confusion. It turned out that the teacher - the seventeen year old minister's daughter Lori - had taken the train last night to Buffalo to elope. Jane, older than most of the other girls at thirteen years old, and tall for her age, approached frazzled Mrs. Benson: "Won't you let me be their new Sunday School teacher?" She quieted the children by asking them to take courage, and read aloud to them the story of Daniel and the Lion. Then she recounted her own escapade with the circus lion, and when she finished the wide-eyed little girls surrounded this laughing, impressive stranger with curious questions. Very soon they decided she was no longer a stranger, and each went home secretly wishing they had Jane for an older sister.

Reverend Benson asked her one day if her class didn't have any messages for Maybeth Jakab. Seven-year-old Maybeth and her baby brother Terry had been part of her Sunday School class until her mother had to have an operation, and Maybeth was sent to live with a half-blind great-Aunt on the old line road. It was far away to walk to church, but Reverend Benson drove to see them once in a blue moon. Maybeth was lonely for her friends. Reverend Benson thought they could write her letters and Christmas cards to cheer her up.

It was that afternoon at Eaton's when Mother led Jane mysteriously to the children's department. It was festive with music boxes and teddy bears, but Jane was too old for toys, and didn't have any siblings to shop for. She thought of little Maybeth Benson. And then she broached the idea to her Sunday School girls:

"Could you all bring in five cents next week? We'll pool the money, and have an excursion to Eaton's on Saturday. We'll buy gifts for Maybeth and Terry, but we musn't forget her Aunt and mother, too."

They had a delicious afternoon picking out presents for their old friend: a blue sweater with a snowflake pattern, adorable yellow pajamas with purple butterflies printed on the hem - "Maybeth always wanted pajamas and cried because she was the only one in a nightdress when we stayed all night at Carlissa Kyle's last summer" Nellie Moore explained to her - a silk ribbon barette with dangling pearly beads. For Terry they found a few picture books with lovely animal illustrations, a jack in the box with a bobbing orange head, and a stuffed velvet giraffe. They bought lace hankerchiefs for the old Aunt which Jane folded in lavendar from her Lantern Hill garden, and a beautiful soft woolen shawl - between the shades of purple and grey - for the recovering mother. Then they spent the next class wrapping the gifts in foil and tissue paper, and writing christmas messages with colourful crayons. They made a box of ginger cookies, and Jane meant to concoct a fruitcake on Christmas eve to send with Reverend Benson's delivery. Then, as she folded her own red-and-green paper card, she wondered what to write to the little girl she had never seen:

"Dear Marybeth and Terry,

Look for a sleigh with jingling bells in your driveway on Christmas day. Santa has sent it, and it will convoy you to a little stone house called "Sunshine." There, we have prepared a great, big Christmas feast for you, followed by an evening toboganning on the ravine.

Santa's helper,

Jane"

Jane knew just how she would work this Christmas magic. The old whittler, who had made the nativity set, had an ancient cutter in his garden shed that could be oiled and cleaned. The Townleys kept two dappled riding horses. She could get Jim to harness them, and she would tie on them the cowbells Ding-Dong Bell had jokingly sent her for a gift. "I can just picture your face when you pick up this rattling package." he wrote. Jane thought of the bells jingling on the ponies' collars. She had always longed for a sleigh ride like the song:

Dashing through the snow

In a one-horse open sleigh

O'er the hills we go

Laughing all the way.

"I'm going to pray hard that it'll be a white Christmas." she said as she laid out her plans to mother. "We need enough snow to use the cutter."


	2. Chapter 2

It started storming five days before Christmas with such a dense, white blizzard that Jane soon found herself praying for it to stop. What if they couldn't take the little Jakabs out, after all? Jane awoke Christmas morning and peered out her window to find a world hushed beneath a thick blanket of snow.

_O Little Town of Bethlehem  
How still do we see thee lie_

she carolled as she brought Mother and Father's breakfast of toast and tea into her room.

_Above thy deep and dreamless sleep  
The silent stars go by_

Mother joined her. Jane's voice was silver and mother's was golden, and they blended in perfect harmony as they trilled through the song Jane loved best.

_O in thy dark streets shineth  
The everlasting light  
The hopes and fears of all the years  
Are met in thee tonight_

Dad held them close and for a spell there were no three happier people in the world. Then a voice sounded at the door: "What is all this ruckus, Jane, dearie? Robin, love, you musn't exert yourself in your condition, you know... Jane, you're a big girl and ought to leave your mother to rest."

Aunt Irene was the fly in Jane's Christmas ointment. Of course Grandmother would not deign to a Christmas in Sunshine, but Aunt Irene showed up mysteriously just before the storm. Jane had an inkling of what was in the air - you can't hoodwink Jane - but she was determined to save mother from Aunt Irene's babying.

She eyed the breakfast tray on the funny, kidney shaped dressing table they had found at an antique sale. Jane knew she was turning green because she hadn't been first to make breakfast. "Oh, such dainty slices of toast and egg... how thoughtful of you, Janey. Now, let me make you all something real hearty for breakfast in a jiffy." She trotted downstairs and proceeded to crack the eggs that Jane had set aside for the fruitcake, to make buttermilk pancakes.

Jane shrugged and set about lighting the candles on the advent wreaths. She loved the long purple candles with their delicate, flickering flames and berry scents. There would be plenty of sweets without the fruitcake - her flaming plum pudding, Aunt Irene's cherry cobbler pie that she had barred everyone out of the kitchen to make the night before - just to make sure her cookery has a place at the table, Jane knew - and she was going to make chocolate fudge, taffy and peppermint bark with the Jakabs once they arrived.

Jane and Aunt Irene set the turkey to bake just before they heard Jim's jingle down Lakeside Gardens. Jane put on her navy blue sashed coat and white, woolen hat and scarf that looked as fluffy as snow, and ran out. Mother waved as she watched them disappear around the bend.

"One romance has disappeared forever from winter." Andrew said softly. "When I was a boy, the streets used to be alive with the stacatto clip of trotting horses. Now there's naught but automobiles that chug in and chug out, leaving behind brown trails of exhaust. They know not the language of romance."

"I remember the holiday sleigh rides I had as a girl." Robin laughed. "They were always the best part of Christmas - piling in to big sleighs filled with furs, and snuggling down between the velvety coats of your girlfriends or beaux."

"And you still think fondly of these memories with those... beaux?" Andrew's brows furrowed.

"Not as fondly as I recall our first winter, when you taught me to skate at Harbour Head... do you remember?" They conversation melted into something very low and sweet, and Aunt Irene, who could not overhear anymore, splashed water over the dishes with a vengeance.

Jane left behind her quarrel over the turkey stuffing with Aunt Irene as they glided along the white, white road. The hoofprints of Jim's arrival journey were the only traces of human intervention in the snow. But she told Jim all about it, since it concerned him.

"I've set aside some of the turkey stuffing for you - you'll have your own special plate, my favourite yellow one with the red hen."

"I'm much obliged to you, Miss Jane."

"It's a shame Aunt Irene insisted on putting chopped nuts in the stuffing. I told her your medical condition wouldn't let you eat any nuts, but Aunt Irene decreed that nuts were a Stuart tradition." She didn't tell Jim Aunt Irene's patronizing intonations, "The Stuarts have always made stuffing with nuts, love. Old Jim... hired help... those who... seek Christmas charity... really, don't you think they would be the last to be choosy?" Jane fumed at Aunt Irene's implication that Jim was here on charity. He was her guest. And allergies were not to be made light of.

"Shame I can't share that royal tradition, then," Jim was jovial. "But don't you worry your russet head over it, Miss Jane. Look into the back and tell me what you find."

Jane turned and rummaged through the furs. She pulled our a red satchel.

"Jim! where'd you find this?" she exclaimed.

"Look inside!" her ever quiet, whiskered companion now commanded.

Jane untied the drawstring and found two red, three cornered hats. "One for you, and one for me." Jim declared. "We're going to play Santa to the Jakabs through and through. Mrs. Townley gave 'em to me. There's a red dress-shirt, too, and pillows to stuff my belly full." Jim laughed a jolly, roaring laugh that made him sound verily like Santa Claus. Jane thought she had never heard him laugh like that. Jim had just discovered the joys of planning to make others happy.

Jim was even jollier when they brought sweet, curly-haired Maybeth and chubby toddler Terry, and the wizened, wrinkled, blind Aunt Beenie back in Santa's sleigh. He told them fairytales until the sleigh almost lost balance in their shaking laughter, and they sang Christmas songs lustily into the frosty air.

_Hark how the bells,  
sweet silver bells,  
all seem to say,  
throw cares away_

_Christmas is here,  
bringing good cheer,  
to young and old,  
meek and the bold,_

_Ding dong ding dong  
That is their song  
With joyful ring  
All caroling_

_One seems to hear  
Words of good cheer  
From ev'ry where  
Filling the air_

_Oh how they pound,  
raising the sound,  
o'er hill and dale,  
telling their tale,_

_Gaily they ring  
while people sing  
songs of good cheer,_

_Christmas is here,Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,  
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,  
On on they send ,on without end,  
their joyful tone to every home_

_Dong Ding dong ding, dong Bong_


	3. Chapter 3

But the candy endeavours that afternoon went against Jane's plans. Terry cried because Aunt Irene thought he was too small to play in the kitchen, and Maybeth wouldn't abandon him. So Jane and Jim concocted the mixture while the children occupied themselves by playing with the Sunshine pets. Happy always came to Toronto with them, but First Peter and Silver Penny wintered on the Island with Jody. So Jane had two soot black Toronto cats, naturally named Soot and Black. Maybeth petted Soot, who was a quiet, sleepy, aloof little prince. Black was a friendly scrap with a button nose who liked to make new friends, and especially liked to provoke Happy. He followed Terry around like a shadow.

Finally the candy thickened, and Jane employed the children happily in pulling taffy. For the record, Terry was particularly good at it - he would pick up one end and tug hard while running to the other end of the hall. He ran to and fro like a little black puppy.

It was Aunt Irene who persisted in hanging about the kitchen, ostensibly brewing tea.

"Perhaps she didn't realize that it wasn't a very safe place to brew tea." Jane wrote candidly to Jody afterwards. "With Terry tearing around - forgive the pun - and Black always at his heels. And of course, Happy couldn't resist being left out so he chased them in circles. It makes me think of how 'no proper dog wouldn't chase a cat', as Dad likes to quote Kipling. So Aunt Irene had mother's little shallow rosebud teacups filled with amber tea, and set in a row on a silver tray... and she was strutting out the threshold... she does strut, you know, Jody... when Black whizzed from behind, between her feet and Happy scrambled on her toes to catch him. And Terry found it so funny that he just doubled over with laughter and plunged after the cat and dog. What with his giggling, I don't think Aunt Irene had any idea where he was going. He raced around her, taffy in hand still, and tied her legs up - literally - in taffy. It's a good thing Aunt Irene doesn't wear pants - her dress got all sticky but she didn't trip or fall, she only lost balance and spilled the amber tea all over herself before I rescued the tea-tray out of her hands.

"None of us could help laughing. Dad roared and Aunt Irene was extra mad at him, and barely spoke to him all throughout dinner. Mother held her laughter politely but the look she cast me! Even Old Aunt Beenie, who couldn't see a thing, laughed along because we were laughing.

"So the candy was all ruined - I had some left on the stove but that burned, too, because we were too busy washing up. Aunt Irene and Terry had to wash themselves I had to clean the floor of all the sticky taffy and Maybeth and I bathed the kittens. You know how kittens hate to be bathed, and what a time we had catching that cat and that dog before they made all the furniture and carpets sticky!

I almost felt sorry for her Aunt Irene because she didn't have another best dress to wear for supper. So she had to dine in drugget. Why is it that people aren't half as awe-inspiring in their ordinary clothes as they are in their fancy clothes, Jody? Aunt Irene wanted to act like an outraged dutchess, but she only came off as a very silly, sulking, middle-aged woman."

Supper was very quiet, with Aunt Irene ignoring everyone disdainfully, and Mother somehow very pale. Father was moody because Mother seemed unwell. Aunt Beenie muttered the whole time to herself and nobody could hear her. Sweet Maybeth was ashamed that her brother had caused such a catastrophe and found it hard work to swallow the delicious helpings of breast meat and cranberries that Jane put on her plate. Jane, watching her sisterly devotion, felt something tug her heart. She imagined having a little curly-haired bundle to cuddle and protect.

It would truly have been a ghastly meal if not for Terry, who clanged his fork eagerly for more food, filling Jane with culinary pride. And Jim, who had a way of paying humourous compliments, "If I were a turkey and I knew I was destined to be killed, Miss Jane, I'd petition to be sacrificed to a Christmas dinner like the one we've had. Basted and roasted to the Queen's taste - and carved to fill the tummies of happy - lonely- jealous -but most importantly, friendly folks, Miss Jane - it's the most honourable death a bird can have."


	4. Chapter 4

The time came for Jane to bring out her plum pudding in triumph. She darkened the room, and asked mother to set it aflame. She could anticipate the warm glow it would cast on the circle of faces she loved - most of them, anyways. But mother dropped the match on the gold-green tablecloth and turned whiter still, though Jane thought it impossible. Father helped mother out of the room, and moments later Jane heard the car screech away for the hospital.

Nobody had any appetite for plum pudding and Jim drove the Jakabs home hurriedly after supper. Jane was disappointed that they couldn't toboggan on the ravine, after all. Aunt Irene's tongue loosened as she tackled the dishes with Jane.

"You know... love... sometimes, families can be really unexpected."

Jane didn't answer.

"Just when you think things are settled... something... someone... new... surprises you."

"I just want you to be prepared, love..." she trailed off.

"Prepared for what?" Jane asked with her directness.

"For... well, you are a big girl now, Janey... I don't know, but of course there is no one to tell you that ... storks are not... that this... sickness... of your mother's means..."

"I already know that mother is going to have a baby." Jane answered.

Aunt Irene was shocked.

"Well!... well... sometimes I wonder where children nowadays get such inform... in my days young girls were much more innocent..."

Jane missed a perfect opportunity to assure Aunt Irene that she was nearly fourteen.

"I just hope... Janey... if your parents love the baby more... sometimes, you know...especially after all these years... an infant demands so much attention... don't be jealous..."

Jane was never jealous.

Aunt Irene tried another tack.

"Of course Robin is so delicate... and she isn't so young any more... we hadn't expected this for a month yet, Janey... who knows what might happen. If anything... goes wrong... Janey, Andrew will be all alone again... my poor brother... maybe somethings are predestined, after all. Andrew could have had so many girls, you know..."

The dishes were done and Jane could not bear to hear any more of Aunt Irene's prattle. She put on her coat and treaded to the ravine under the still, starry sky. Aunt Irene's hints and insinuations had a way of clinging to you like burrs. She didn't want to worry about them -but what did Aunt Irene mean? What if Aunt Irene was right? If - anything - happened to mother. And what would Dad do then?

"Oh - God - it would be so unfair." she breathed. "After all they have gone through. They have just discovered one another again - give us time together. We love each other so."

But even Jane knew that God had let greater injustices come to pass.

Dad found her there, leaning a frozen cheek against the bark of a rough pine.

"How's it looking, my Jane?"

"Dad - mother will be alright, won't she? Aunt Irene said -"

"Irene worries too much, like all womenkind." Dad shrugged. "But yes, there's always danger in a birth, and greater danger in a case when it's early." he added gravely.

They both looked into the dark waters of the Humber flowing incessantly by, and were eloquently silent for a spell.

"Dad - dad - if anything happened to mother, would you - you wouldn't remarry?" she finally pierced the air, in a choked whisper.

"No - no - by the nine gods, no!" Andrew's voice shook the branches, and he took his daughter in his arms. "I love your mother. I love you. You are my family ...now, and always, my Jane. Do you understand?"

Jane felt his warmth through his coat, and her faith burned in her heart once more.


	5. Chapter 5

Jane and Aunt Irene went back with dad through the dreaming night, to the Queen's hospital. Someone else got out of the car beside them in the snow - a black limousine Jane recognized. Grandmother's face, distorted by passion and hate, accosted Dad. 

"If you kill my daughter, lightning will strike you... you'll taste fire and brimstone." she cursed.

"Whoever told you to come here?" Jane thought. But Grandmother saved her her wonder.

"I thank you..." her gratitude was venomous "for telling me my daughter is dying, Irene Fraser." she spat after them.

"Mother isn't dying." Jane corrected her. "This is a birth, not a death."

"Victoria, don't speak of things you do not know about."

"I know more than you think!" Jane cried.

They sat in the little white waiting room. It is agony to sit for a long time in silence with people you hate. Jane stared at the bare white room that nobody had ever loved... that had contained so much suffering, so much hope and futility. There was nothing to relieve the emptiness and hostility - bare walls, white curtains, cold metal chairs. Jane didn't know how late it was, and she was so cold. The window looked out into nothing but a confining brick wall, and it was barred. It made Jane feel like a caged animal. The tiniest sounds stood out in the silence... the ticking of a clock from somewhere... the nurses pushing their carts to and fro. Jane wished she could help the nurses do something for mother. If she could work - then the terror would not be so unbearable. She knew she would not be allowed to, however - one of the nurses had frowned at the presence of a teenager on the premises, but said nothing. Jane thanked her stars that she was tall for her age. She hated the idleness of waiting.

Somebody woke her... Jane didn't know she had fallen asleep in her chair.

"We can go in to see Mother." Dad's voice, sounding twenty years younger, was whispering in her ear. "She is quite well... and of course you must get acquainted with your new little sister."

Grandmother and Aunt Irene and the nurse hung around Mother's bed, but Jane saw only Mother with a miniature edition of herself lying beside her on her pillow. The baby had mother's golden hair and blue eyes, and dainty, rosebud features.

"Robin Rose Noelle." mother introduced them.

"A robin, and a rose-in-December, for our family's Christmas gift! Oh, mother, what magic you managed!" Jane cried happily.


End file.
